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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820047">As Polyclitus Said, Perfection Comes Bittle By Bittle</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens'>tomato_greens</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Check Please! (Webcomic)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>M/M, Twitter, antiquities</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 12:49:25</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>3,138</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25820047</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/tomato_greens/pseuds/tomato_greens</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>ROMAN MARBLE TORSO OF POLYCLITUS' "DRESDEN YOUTH" -- CIRCA FIRST QUARTER OF THE 1ST CENTURY A.D.<br/>26 3/8 in. (67 cm.) high<br/>Provenance - Elsa Bloch-Diener collection, Bern, acquired prior to 1988.</p><p>Really, when you get down into it, the size of the whole affair is a matter of perspective!</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Eric "Bitty" Bittle/Kent "Parse" Parson/Jack Zimmermann</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>5</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>42</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Collections:</b></td><td>Check Please Heartbreak Fest 2020</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>As Polyclitus Said, Perfection Comes Bittle By Bittle</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/gifts">queerofcups</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Happy Heartbreak Fest to <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/queerofcups/pseuds/queerofcups">queerofcups</a>! I tried to incorporate some small aspect of all of your prompts (1. Kent, Bitty and Jack get together. It's messy but it works. / 2. BItty and Jack in the years after they get married. / 3. What if Bitty hadn't put up with Jack's shit when they were dating--what if their relationship didn't go so smoothly) and I hope you like this very silly result! </p><p>Many thanks to [secret conspirator], who came up with the best joke of the fic and found the torso, to boot.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Later, Bitty worked the timeline back, and figured the Tweet must have been sent just as he was digging two knuckles into Kent’s $900 espresso machine to try and knock some work ethic back into the lackluster milk foamer. </p><p>Kent had been rich for over a decade, but he didn’t seem to know anything about money or how to spend it—he’d just gesture at his laptop and grunt something about Amazon whenever Bitty offered to take him along to the latest little boutique he’d discovered. Jack, whose money was tied up in a handful of mysterious and highly discreet investment portfolios, was almost as bad, but he’d at least inherited a sharp-eyed accountant from his father. </p><p>Neither of them had idea how to live: how to send the espresso machine for servicing, how to fill the empty corners of their houses with personality. “You could at least put a potted plant somewhere, Parson,” Bitty had said in shock the first time they’d been invited over, when the great icy silence between Jack and Kent had begun to thaw. Kent and Jack had refused to look each other in the eye no matter how many times Bitty complimented the roast chicken, and Jack’s hand had clenched on Bitty’s knee. “You know, something with a little life in it.”</p><p>“Purrs might get sick if he eats it,” Kent had hedged, and since then—after Jack’s claw grip turned out  to be at least thirty percent raw-tongued lust—Bitty had taken it upon himself to introduce Kent to the finer things in life: a cat-safe variegated calathea! Jack’s mouth in a variety of exciting locales including but not limited to Kent’s perineum! An expensive set of Lobmeyr port glasses! Why not, after all? Kent’s entire history of hedonistic behavior in general and dicksucking in specific seemed about as satisfying as the average medieval monk’s, which was to say, obvious in retrospect and a consuming passion of Jack Zimmermann’s, but not anything Bitty would care to write home about.</p><p>It had taken several Stanley Cup losses for their understanding to crystallize into anything firmer than a few weekends a year, Bitty petting Purrs absently as he told Kent to screw his fingers in harder than that, Jesus, Parse, did Jack look like a hothouse flower or like a professional athlete who knew how to get fucked? “Fucked, fucked,” Jack pleaded, over and over, and after a few years of that they’d ended up in an arrangement Lardo insisted on calling a circumbinary throuple whenever Bitty texted her to complain. </p><p>“I don’t know any of the words you just said, and anyway, we’re all just gay,” Bitty would text back, frustrated, to which Lardo would inevitably send a string of bizarre emoji, because unlike Bitty she was emotionally stuck in 2015. </p><p>Thanks to Twitter and multiple rounds of CBT with Marcia the licensed clinical social worker, Bitty had been made aware that in many ways that he’d lucked into a cushioned adulthood, but sometimes he was jealous of office drones who at least got to make new friends after college, whereas he was stuck with a handful of former hockey obsessives and an unhinged following of teenagers who wrote porn about him, his husband, and anyone he’d so much as @ed. </p><p>“That’s not how it works, Bittle,” Kent would say—</p><p>But what did Kent know? He’d hardly had a more typical adulthood than Bitty, ushered from golden wunderkindhood to fame on the back of his snap shot. Frankly, Kent knew very little about anything; he was basically a savant whose expertise was limited to the areas of hockey and Jack’s ass. Like, not even asses in general, just Jack’s. Sure, Bitty’s entire sexual experience had also been limited to Jack before they’d started sleeping with Kent, but unlike Kent, Bitty wasn’t one to flip out when confronted with a new ass. No, Bitty had his problems, but he’d spent the last five years of his marriage working on  himself, and he was so well-adjusted now he didn’t even mind the Eric Bittle/Alexei Mashkov/Gritty erotica collection that had popped up on his Google alerts. </p><p>As if, by the way.</p><p>In any event, Kent was a sad case when Bitty first got his hands on him, pathetically and obviously hungry for Jack but stymied by Bitty’s more refined tastes. Better Living Through Bitty had been a rousing success, as far as Bitty was concerned—Kent’s soft hands lent him a deft touch with an erectile pump, for one thing, and for another he’d finally begun to have opinions about his own condo. Yes, he liked the espresso machine; no, he hated that throw pillow, why had Bitty brought it on the plane all the way from Providence? Kent was obviously wrong about the throw pillow, which was a deep cocoa-colored velveteen and tied his living room together, but Bitty was pleased that Kent was finally entering the goddamn conversation! </p><p>They were never going to go public with the relationship—well, despite whatever nonsense Lardo called it, was this a relationship? There was no question that Bitty and Jack were a couple; they had the marriage license, the shared income, the years of cute Halloween costumes, the months of backbreaking couples’ counseling when Bitty understood that Jack had really meant it when he said he couldn’t imagine having children. No matter how sweet Jack became when Kent was touching him, the three of them simply didn’t have the same history. Safe upon the pedestal of his marriage, Bitty could afford to be magnanimous!</p><p>And didn’t Kent, hungry and alone in his frighteningly bare luxury condo, deserve it?</p><p>There was no point really spoiling Kent as long as Purrs was around to joyfully shatter whatever Bitty bought him, but for their third whatever-aversary, after Purrs finally lost his lifelong battle to FeLV, Bitty thought Kent deserved something special. “A genuine piece of art!” he told Jack, turning the iPad around so that Jack could see <a href="https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ancient-art-antiquities/a-roman-marble-cupid-circa-2nd-century-6084695-details.aspx?from=salesummery&amp;intObjectID=6084695">the Christie’s page</a>. </p><p>“That’s a bit sentimental,” said Jack, frowning at the second century Roman Cupid and swiping past it. “He might like <a href="https://www.christies.com/lotfinder/ancient-art-antiquities/a-roman-marble-torso-of-polykleitos-dresden-6084697-details.aspx?from=searchresults&amp;intObjectID=6084697">this</a>, though.” </p><p>“Jack—that boy doesn’t even have a head.”</p><p>“He’ll like it,” Jack said.</p><p>Jack so rarely offered guidance on any of Bitty’s purchases that it felt pretty kinky to register for the auction. Besides, however respectable Bitty’s cookbook profits, the joint account attached to the matte black card in Bitty’s wallet was primarily filled by the fruits of Jack’s labor, and so what Jack wanted, Bitty would provide—as he always did.</p><p>Shipping the thing seemed like such a hassle that Bitty nearly drove it to Vegas himself, until he realized he’d have to wrench open the wooden packing crate and would probably break off the statue’s only remaining appendage in the process. For another comparatively small fee, Christie’s arranged not only the shipping but the installation, thank God, so all Bitty had to  do was book a flight and arrive at Kent’s condo right on time.</p><p>“Bittle,” Kent said, opening the door at Bitty’s text, his face flat in shock. </p><p>Well, it was an extravagant gift, wasn’t it! The kind of gift that would shock anyone! You could say a lot of things about Jack—and about Bitty, for that matter, as Marcia the licensed clinical social worker was helping Bitty learn to admit—but no one would call them ungenerous. </p><p>“Aw, isn’t it a scream?” Bitty asked, pushing past Kent into the living room, where two barrel-chested men in coveralls were laboring over the deeply recessed wall niche that Kent had previously used to store cat toys. “Jack thought you’d like it.”</p><p>“It’s certainly something,” Kent said, and what with one thing and another, Bitty didn’t get a chance to really admire the torso until the next morning, when he snuck out of bed to start the coffee. He’d never loved the condo’s nouveau riche open floor plan, but the ostentatious minimalism was more appealing when offset by a swathe of Greco-Roman muscle. </p><p>Jack was right, Bitty thought; there was something distinctly Kentlike in the torso’s insouciant lean, the way the little museum-grade display lights caught and slid along the arch of the ribcage. Generally, Bitty preferred the role of director rather than getting his hands dirty, but more than once even he’d found himself mouth-first on the flat stretch of Kent’s sternum. Of course, Kent benefited from the existence of his arms and legs, not to mention his face. Still, the statue looked beautiful tucked into the display niche—marble proof that Bitty had worked to make room for Kent, welcomed him into his marital bed despite his early misgivings. </p><p>So, really, the problem was that Twitter just didn’t have the context!</p><p>Lord, if he’d known how many people were  going to see the picture, he’d have taken a better selfie with softer lighting. He’d almost done it—almost moved to the skylight rather than let Kent’s blue-white kitchen LEDs deepen the suggestion of the crease that was one day going to be a really miserable wrinkle between his eyebrows. But what was the harm, he’d thought, in looking a little human on Instagram? In letting the teens who wrote porn about him see him precisely as he was, flawed, striving? </p><p><i>UM</i>, he did not expect @BAkINGB0Y 👑 to Tweet at him, <i>WHAT AM I SEEING IN THE BACKGROUND OF @omgcheckplease’s LATEST PHOTO???</i></p><p>Bitty was not unfamiliar with a certain kind of internet notoriety. He’d certainly crouched over  his phone to watch his RTs climb whenever he revealed his controversial opinion about kumquat jam or something, though he’d been working with Marcia on finding other uses for his apparently “frenetic” energy. What hurt the worst, he thought, was that he hadn’t known to expect it: he hadn’t been on his guard. Who knew a lil’ ol’ torso would get in the deep-fried craw of everyone who’d ever disliked his opinions that rough puff was basically as  good as the real stuff? </p><p><i>omg omg omg</i>, Bitty didn’t know @BAkINGB0Y 👑 ’s BFF @queeralicious was QRTing while Bitty finished his first cup of drip coffee and got up again to worry at the espresso machine, <i>is that - ugh, I can’t believe I’m saying this - a naked statue of a child? </i> </p><p>Jack’s Uber was due to arrive soon, and—no matter the beans, no matter the the filter, no matter how loaded with half and half—he insisted whenever they were at Kent’s that drip coffee gave him heartburn. </p><p>
  <i>Can’t believe you would  suggest @omgcheckplease has art of a naked child without any  grounds, that’s frankly so  irresponsible given the history of gay identity and its conflation with pedophilia?</i>
</p><p>Bitty had always suspected Jack simply liked the gold-edged demitasse cups that Kent had inherited from his mother, but Bitty no longer had the patience to entertain Jack’s little tantrums. </p><p>
  <i>we can only see half of whatever it is and it’s too muscular to be a kid, but it’s sooo sexualized, definitely really weird and makes me uncomfy that he posted a photo with it on IG</i>
</p><p>Anyhow, tamping freshly ground coffee into the portafilter had eventually become its own calming ritual whenever they were staying at Kent’s. </p><p>
  <i>lol first of all eat shit and die its not homophobic to question whether a public figure has a statue of a naked child that said its got a legit c*m g*tter and is def not a kid so idk what the fuck @queeralicious is on</i>
</p><p>There was something meditative in checking the miniature pressure gauge, and in arranging the demitasse cups and spoons on the ancient tray Kent’s sister had modge podged with rose-patterned paper napkins twenty years ago. </p><p>
  <i>Okay, listen, not trying to fan the flames here, but my sister works for a private collector so we sometimes talk about items she sees at auction, doesn’t it kind of look like this  ~Roman youth~?</i>
</p><p>The little layers of napkin were starting to peel; Bitty made a note. </p><p>
  <i>holy shit 630,000$ for some pecs and a penis? EAT THE RICH LMAO</i>
</p><p>He’d been eyeing a white onyx tray at Milk Glass Market, but had nowhere to put it in either the Providence house or the cottage up in Cape Breton. </p><p>
  <i>Seriously excuse you, Eric Bittle has been an inspiration to so many  and  has brought  so much sunshine into so many LGBT teens’ lives, he can have  whatever he wants to in his house? Although to me this doesn’t even look like one of his houses.</i>
</p><p>The milk foamer refused to be coaxed beyond an unimpressive performance, but Jack took his espresso black, so at least it was only Bitty’s second cup that would be affected. </p><p>
  <i>ONE of his houses who is this guy</i>
</p><p>Kent never seemed to care much about the coffee one way or the other, grunting a thanks no matter what Bitty set in front of him, which was slightly disheartening. </p><p>
  <i>ok w/ all due respect u guys dont know that much abt the antiquities trade, but u know how there’s no ethical consumption under capitalism? well theres srsly no ethical consumption under antiquities trade. 1/8 ...</i>
</p><p>Then again, Kent had never been anything but effusive about Bitty’s pies—and when someone loved his maple sugar crust as much as Kent did, it was an obvious sign of good sense! </p><p>
  <i>if that statues real (hard to tell from the photo but I think it is, see identical rough patch on the belly), @omgcheckplease is basically complicit in looting &amp; and should b ashamed of himself 2/8 ... </i>
</p><p>After three years of slick effort, Bitty was finally coming to understand who Kent was, underneath his hockey-bred monotone and his obvious inability to understand a tasteful home color palette. </p><p>
  <i>Seconded; the antiquities trade has historically preyed on nonwestern, nonwhite communities in the global south; this is a troubling sign that @omgcheckplease hasn’t thoughtfully engaged with his own capitalist footprint, to say the least. </i>
</p><p>And Bitty prided himself on his ability to judge a character! Kent, he reflected, had done a lot of growing since that first stilted chicken dinner. </p><p>
  <i>I don’t even go here but I found this PDF of this guy’s senior thesis, lmaoooo what an idiot </i>
</p><p>“Bits?” he heard  Jack call softly from the foyer.</p><p>
  <i>yeah I dunno if you ask me we don’t exactly need to glorify the Romans first of all and second of all @omgcheckplease you couldn’t have spent that money supporting living non-white-dude-artists in your community? </i>
</p><p>“Sweetheart, I didn’t even hear you come in!” Bitty said, bringing one of the espressos along with him and exchanging it for Jack’s suitcase, and a kiss on the cheek.</p><p>
  <i>I’m willing to reserve judgment but I do think it’s only responsible for @omgcheckplease to respond?</i>
</p><p> “I was so busy with that ridiculous foamer I didn’t hear your key in the lock. Your flight was safe?” </p><p>
  <i>I love binging @omgcheckplease’s Make A Pie With Me vids as much as the next depressed twentysomething, but I think it’s worth at least gently asking him if he’s considered the impact of a uploading essentially an explicit photo on his more impressionable fans? </i>
</p><p>“No oxygen masks,” Jack said agreeably, lumbering around the bulk of his suitcase to head towards  the breakfast nook, stopping to admire the torso along the way. “The torso looks good.”  </p><p>
  <i>what is wrong with you entitled weirdos, @omgcheckplease is such an icon and does not deserve this  </i>
</p><p>“It certainly matures the living room,” Bittty said, wheeling the suitcase further towards the couch,  where he’d unpack it later. “And I think Kent likes it?”</p><p>
  <i>honestly HOPE @omgcheckplease LISTENS and UNDERSTANDS and APOLOGIZES, this is  an OPPORTUNITY for him to finally take ACCOUNTABILITY </i>
</p><p>“He likes it,” Jack said, in that weird self-assured away he sometimes got about Kent, as if only he could decipher Kent’s inscrutable body language even when Kent wasn’t in the  room. “Bits, please, why won’t your phone stop buzzing?”  </p><p>
  <i>I don’t understand where @omgcheckplease is in this conversation and think he should speak up, but could y’all stop saying he did something insane like uploading an explicit photo just because he took a picture of some craggy marble????</i>
</p><p>“Oh my God,” Bitty said, feeling his blood drain into his  jaw, where it surely collect and  form horrible little jowls if  he didn’t massage it out again later. “Oh my God! Jack! They think I’m a sex criminal!” </p><p>“Euuh,” said Jack, taking the phone from Bitty and scrolling through the dozens of notifications that had suddenly bloomed the way cystic acne bloomed, only partially predictable and inevitably excruciating. “Well, you can  see the penis in the photo.” </p><p>“It’s not explicit! It’s—well! It’s Roman!”</p><p>Kent shuffled in, then, with red pillow lines creasing his cheek, and left a friendly enough hand on Bitty’s shoulder while pulling Jack down into a kiss. “What’s going on?” he mumbled, mostly into Jack’s Adam’s apple.</p><p>“The internet thinks Bits is a sex criminal.”</p><p>“Jack!”</p><p>“Oh. Huh. Well, is he?”</p><p>“Kent!” Bitty shrieked, feeling suddenly and murderously like his gelatinous horrible guts were floating three feet above his  eyeballs, threatening to take his entire body out, plus anybody in a ten  foot vicinity.  “That’s  not—listen—this isn’t funny!”</p><p>“He might be,” Jack said seriously. “Depends on the Terms of Service.” </p><p>“Jack! Don’t you dare—” </p><p>But Kent had reached out and caught Bitty’s collar, his big slightly calloused thumb knuckle resting right on the bone at the nape of Bitty’s neck—a grip he often used to corral Jack but had never before used on Bitty. Bitty had always thought, how condescending, to be led around by the nose (or the neck), though certainly Jack had always seemed seemed to enjoy it. “Come on,” Kent said, and for once Bitty didn’t feel compressed into unbearable small nothingness by the deep rumble of Kent’s voice. Accompanied by the warmth of his thumb, in fact Kent transformed into a shape like comfort. “Let’s get out of the entryway, if we’re going to talk about whether Bitty’s technically arrestable or—ugh, whatever.” </p><p>“I made you coffee,” Bitty offered to Kent in a sudden rush, feeling weirdly shy, considering how many orgasms he’d wrung out of Kent’s asshole over the past three years. “And I picked up some of that soy creamer from Trader Joe’s, so you don’t have to take a Lactaid pill.” </p><p>Kent’s thumb knuckle quivered for a second, then relaxed as they headed in one many-limbed creature into the breakfast nook. “Thanks, Bitty.” </p><p>“Ha ha,” Jack said, as he and Kent sat down and Bitty set about plating the cardamom-glazed yeasted cinnamon buns he’d thrown together the night before, in between playful rounds of semi-erotic asphyxiation.  “Guess it’s a good thing you didn’t go for the Cupid, eh, bud?” </p><p>“—What Cupid? Jack? What’s he talking about, Bitty?—”</p>
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